COLUMBUS, Ohio - Previous attempts to ban traffic-enforcement cameras in Ohio were vetoed by the governor and nixed by two courts, but outrage over a speed trap in a tiny Southwest Ohio village has provided fresh fuel for an anti-camera law.

A bipartisan team headed by Cincinnati-area legislators is pushing a bill that would outlaw speed and red-light cameras in Ohio, trumping ordinances that allow the cameras in more than a dozen cities, including Cleveland, Akron, East Cleveland, Parma and Parma Heights. Last year alone, the cameras netted a total of more than $16 million for the communities that are the top camera revenue generators.

The bill is currently in the House of Representatives' transportation committee, and could be put to a full House vote as early as this week. If approved, it would have to pass a Senate vote and be signed by Gov. John Kasich to become law.

The controversial traffic camera issue pits two formidable interest groups against each other: Law enforcement officials, who cite the safety benefits of cameras, versus civil rights advocates, who criticize the cameras as cash cows for revenue-starved cities.

Tabitha Woodruff of the Ohio Public Interest Research Group, said citizens are overwhelmingly opposed to traffic cameras. When the issue is put on the ballot, voters have rejected cameras an average of nine out of 10 times, including in Garfield Heights and South Euclid, she said.

"If traffic cameras cannot be introduced into a town in a way that earns the public's confidence, then they shouldn't be introduced at all," Woodruff said last week. "The primary motivation should be public safety. They shouldn't be a cash cow designed to rip off drivers."

The financial benefits of traffic cameras are unquestionable. During the six years since 34 traffic cameras were erected in Cleveland, the city has collected more than $47 million in fines and fees, including $6 million in 2012.

Across the state, Toledo collected nearly $3 million from traffic cameras in 2012 -- more than double the previous year. The city expects to collect about $4.2 million from the cameras this year.

Columbus' cameras brought in $2.1 million last year -- more than the previous two years combined. Dayton's cameras brought in more than $4 million, according to published reports.

At the genesis of the renewed effort to ban the cameras is a lawsuit filed against Elmwood Place, a village of 2,000 people surrounded by Cincinnati, which during a two-week period last year used an automated camera to catch 20,000 speeders on one block. The village collected $1.5 million in fines, but stirred up a hornet's nest of protest in the process.

"Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of three-card monte," Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman wrote in an opinion that banned the cameras, ruling the village's camera ordinance was invalid. "It is a scam the motorist cannot win."

Nearly 700 cities in 13 states and the District of Columbia have speed and red-light cameras in operation, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Ohio has more than a dozen jurisdictions that use them, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says.

If approved by the legislature, Ohio would become the 13th state in the country to ban traffic cameras.

Cleveland already has weighed in against the pending camera bill, contending it would violate the city's right to home rule, and would be unconstitutional, said Maureen Harper, the communications chief for Mayor Frank Jackson.

Ken Scarett of the Ohio Municipal League said his group sides with Cleveland and opposes the camera bill.

"For us it's a safety issue," Scarett said last week. "If the state prohibits traffic cameras there would not be any local control over the issue and it would usurp the will of the people in these communities that have cameras."

The pending traffic camera ban reads almost exactly the same as a proposed law in 2007 that was vetoed by then-Gov. Bob Taft, Scarett said. Taft cited the home rule violation and the benefits to public safety in allowing cameras to remain.

Automated traffic cameras have withstood numerous legal challenges in Ohio, most recently in 2008 in the Ohio Supreme Court, and in 2010 in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Whether the current traffic camera bill is going to make it to the governor's desk is questionable, said Mike Dittoe, a spokesman for Ohio House Speaker William G. Batchelder, a Medina Republican.

"There are definitely some very wide viewpoints on this bill," Dittoe said last week. "It's an interesting scenario, with some municipalities and law enforcement coming out against the bill, and many motorists for the bill. And at the forefront, you have bipartisan support for the bill, which is being sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat.

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